As awareness of issues, such as dwindling natural resources and accelerating global warming, relating to unchecked consumer energy consumption grows, systems and methods to monitor energy being consumed have been developed. An example of such as system is a “smart meter”, which is an advanced meter, for example an electrical meter, which is attached to a device or unit that uses electricity, such as a building. A smart meter may monitor and records energy consumption in more detailed manner than a conventional meter. Typically, such smart meters communicate the recorded information back, via a system such as a telecommunications network, to the energy supplier whose systems measure, collect and analyze recorded energy usage for monitoring and billing purposes. Smart meters can help consumers measure and manage energy consumption, working on the basis that if the consumer knows how much energy they are using and can see which actions reduce that energy consumption they can adopt those actions as habits.
Smart meters typically comprise real-time or near real-time sensors, power outage notification means, and means for power quality monitoring and the meter can monitor and record energy consumption such as gas, electricity or water. The gathered information can be transferred to the supplier through a suitable communication medium either on request or on a pre-defined schedule. The infrastructure to facilitate this includes the hardware of the actual meter, software such as data management software, communication means and customer associated systems.
The network between the smart meter and business system end of energy provision allows collection and distribution of information to customers, suppliers, utility companies and service providers. This enables these parties to participate in, provide, and/or demand response solutions, products and services. By providing information to customers, the system assists a change in energy usage from the normal user consumption patterns, either in response to changes in price or in direct response to incentives designed to encourage lower energy usage use at times of peak-demand periods or higher wholesale prices or during periods of low operational systems reliability.
An example of system involving smart meters being implemented is “AlertMe”, an online energy management service working with Google™'s PowerMeter software. Using a type of smart meter which clips onto a pre-existing meter to record usage, information can be provided to the AlertMe service. This system then gives consumers the ability to monitor, via the internet, how they are using energy within their homes from any remote location. Based upon this information, consumers can make better decisions on how to use energy in order to help reduce their utility bills and the size of their carbon footprint.
Another such system which provides consumer feedback on energy usage and which can be retrofitted to existing installations is the eRunner Energy Monitor. This provides a graphical display of energy usage such as electricity, water or gas, provides an alert in the event of irregular usage or power failure and is compatible with smart meters. This system takes information from the smart meters and allows consumers to compare multiple building or sites on a real time basis; compare each day's data to a ‘perfect day’; see energy usage instantaneously; retrieve stored data for historic viewing; monitor temperature and humidity; calculate which energy provider offers best value for the particular usage patterns; exception and error reporting on live updates via text or email if required and tailor reports of energy usage as is required.
By comparison, traditional meters only measure total consumption and as such, provide no information of when the energy was consumed and traditional reporting systems merely generate a final bill. Smart meters provide an economical way of measuring this information and the related reporting systems available can give feedback on the usage patterns recorded.
However, whilst use of a smart meter can provide a clearer picture of energy consumption patterns in terms of real time usage, for larger units, such as buildings, there is currently no way of identifying what is creating the energy usage beyond manually assessing all possible energy consuming devices operating within the unit. Whilst in a small environment, such as a home, such a manual assessment of energy consuming devices may be a relatively simple process, within a larger environment, such as a factory or office block, this becomes an unwieldy and impractical undertaking